Add Rocks, Remove Grains
June 20, 2012 – 6:57 pm
So often I hear people complain that they can’t cook healthy food and can’t exercise because they need more time in the day. We can’t create time, but you can prioritize it by: starting with the big rocks. Imagine your day as a large jar and your busy schedule is represented as rocks of various sizes: from grains of sand to pebbles, to small stones, all the way up to big rocks. The Big Rocks symbolize the highest priority, high payoff important events which you define.
Most of us fill in our calendar-jar with the closest, most convenient, and least priority: like throwing handfuls of sand in your jar. As a result, the big rocks, your highest priority, won’t fit unless you begin with them, and only after, do you place the gravel and sand around them.
The corollary to this is that if you find your jar overwhelmed, and you can’t lodge any of your big tasks in your day, then start the excavation process: even if only one grain of sand at a time.
As I learned in martial art, life is often a process of subtracting the non-essential, rather than adding the superfluous. Remove that which is unnecessary, even if only a seemingly insignificant burden: the accumulation of removing these small things, can eventually move a mountain of debris… If you begin, be consistent and be diligent.
Then as you add your big rocks to your day, more flotsam will surface for removal… A continual process of adding the essential and subtracting the non.
V/R,
Scott Sonnon
One Response to “Add Rocks, Remove Grains”
I love your blog and your programs. Great stuff!
By Scott on Jun 22, 2012